Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Loren Sweatt spoke at the Pennsylvania Governor's Safety and Health Conference on October 28, 2019.
One of the fathers of occupational health, Irving Selikoff, once said that “statistics are people with the tears wiped away.”
Today, the statistics look bad. This week we learned that coal mining deaths doubled in 2017, and rose to their highest point in three years. Fifteen miners died on the job in 2017, compared with eight in 2016, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).
OSHA has cited Loveland, Ohio-based Carter Construction Co. Inc. with four – including two willful – safety violations for exposing workers to excavation hazards while installing an underground storm sewer pipe in a 20-foot-deep trench in Montgomery.
In an indication that trenching hazards remain a widespread problem, OSHA recently cited a Wisconsin pump service, Rhode Island contractor and Ohio excavation company for exposing workers to trenching hazards.
OSHA has cited Martin & Company Excavating Inc., an underground utility construction and earth-moving company in Oregon, Ill., for one willful and three serious safety violations for failing to protect workers from cave-ins during trenching operations at a Forreston work site.
